10 Comments

1. 

   Balzac on April 12, 2009 at 7:27 pm

   BAS people,

   First, thanks to Amanda and Tom (and guests) for an interesting discussion.

   Second, I don’t know that The Watchmen sucked Donkey Balls all that much. It wasn’t Citizen Kane, but it wasn’t Ishtar either.

   Is the Blue Man Group really a better expenditure of ones entertainment dollar? I recall that tickets for TBMG are quite expensive, couldn’t I, for instance, see The Watchmen, the Fast and The Furious, and round it off with The Hannah Montana Movie, with pops, hot-dogs, and good & plenty, for the same amount of money?

   Third, and most important, if Richard, or any member of Bad at Sports, has a monkey tail penis it needs to be substantiated with pictures.

   Balzac

2. 

   Amanda B-Rowder on April 12, 2009 at 7:30 pm

   oh man…i peed a little after reading your comment…HA!

3. 

   Richard on April 13, 2009 at 7:02 am

   They have “adult incontinence products” to assist you with such issues!

   Great round-table!

4. 

   Mike B. on April 13, 2009 at 5:00 pm

   Balzac,

   I hate it when we disagree. Can’t we find common ground?

   m

5. 

   Balzac on April 14, 2009 at 10:48 am

   Mike,

   We can agree that Richard has a monkey-tail penis, and that people should be happy with what God gave them.

   Balzac

6. 

   duncan. on April 14, 2009 at 6:02 pm

   In this case… I’m not sure what kind of god would do that.

   That is some serious Old Testament stuff.

   Frightening.

   Sorry it had to come out this way Richard. I’ll always love you.

7. 

   Mike B. on April 15, 2009 at 8:59 am

   http://www.hindunet.org/god/Gods/hanuman/

   Those Hindus have a god for everything.

   m

8. 

   Mark Staff Brandl on April 15, 2009 at 11:07 am

   Or maybe appropriate to the discusssion here would be Shiva, also called “Mahalingam” which translates as Great Penis. No kidding.

9. 

   Mark Staff Brandl on April 15, 2009 at 1:12 pm

   Okay, having myself added to the silly part of the discussion, as fun as it is to torment Richard, I’d like to get some of this commenting also onto a track of real discussion.

   The discussion in the podcast was very thought-provoking. I enjoyed most of it and just want to respond, rather scattered, to a few things that I found “rousing.”

   All participants had some fine observations. John was amusing, but more importantly also the best with putting questions into various larger contexts. Craig too did that often, I must add. I can’t remember who said it, but John or Craig pointed out the repercussion of the 70s recession (which brought us Reagan and the beginning of all the rampant de-regulation which just almost destroyed the world economy). I was in the university then and am often amazed that that never gets mentioned. Everything seems too often to revolve around the belief that the artworld began in the late 80s. The 70s was an even bigger problem, with some astounding experimantalism. Good job there. AND the points about much farther back in history, like the Renaissance.

   The criticism of critics and their recent Schadenfreude pops up almost everywhere now. And usually with an accusation of having an “agenda.” OK, perhaps, but the implicit idea there is that others did and do not have an agenda. That is blatantly false. As we have pointed out on Sharkforum.org, and as have many others, including, I believe Craig here, the Octoberists and various followers had and HAVE an agenda. They used the bubble-burst of the 80s to promote their positions, literally often in the case of assuming professorships at that time, and began to press Neo-Conceptualism down everyone’s throats. It wasn’t just happenstance. Baldessari has made rather a career of using his position to clone himself, e.g. So chill on the “agenda” call — or also discuss the last use of such a position, the situation wherein most of the younger BaS people went to school, thus taking its notions for givens and transparent. The fact is that due to the current bubble-burst, the power elite sees a potential loss of hegemony, especially in the bloated field of trendy, international curator-star-types, and their house-brand form of Neo-Conceptualism. This fear makes them cry out “agenda” against Salz et al. perhaps recognizing both their own strategy in use against themselves, and seeing a potential loss of clout.

   In general, a great discussion!

   I thoroughly adore and agree with John’s complaint that critics Are simply too slutty. That is what was bothering me, yet I hadn’t nailed it down so accurately! The lack of real commitment, relationship, loyalty and passion. — that metaphor identifies the “crisis of criticism” far better than most other, far more long-winded discussion now so prevalent. I love that and am going to quote it often. I would love to see some strong criticism, yet also some critics doing some “sticking to their ideas” by promotomg things they love over an extended period of time; we need some Guillaume Apollinaires, Charles Baudelaires, Andre Bretons, Harold Rosenbergs, perhaps Lawrence Alloways, etc.

   Likewise the statement about the “conflation of tourism and art acquisition” — wonderfully phrased and observed, and people living in more provincial areas see that most clearly.

   A comment, yes Danto expresses his “End of Art” theory often, mostly in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, but also The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art and elsewhere. One of the best people struggling with this notion is Danto’s chief pupil, philosopher David Carrie. I discussed and argued with Danto in my long review of carrier’s wonderful book, The Aesthetics of Comics (my essay is on-line here: http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/by_brandl/carrier.html) In short, we boith disagree with Danto. My view is that the collapse of art into ontology, as he describes, is simply the end of one form of art history (a linear march as we have known and studied it), making a more braided, cable or rope-like approach possible).

   I have to add as a compliment to Danto, with whom I have discussed this personally, that hehas also some new ideas on his own belief, and he is self-deprecating enough to have enjoyed the cartoon I did of Krazy Kat and the Brillo Boxes, poking fun at his idea, which was published with my essay. He now has the original of my cartoon framed over his desk!

10. 

    Mark Staff Brandl on April 15, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    Oh yeah, the cartoon is also mat the link above with the essay, or directly here: http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/by_brandl/brillokrazy%20cartoon.jpg .